Hello! he said, the lamp is not lighted yet. But it is dark. Can they have gone out? He waited until ten oclock. Until midnight. Until one in the morning. Not a light appeared in the windows of the third story, and no one entered the house. He went away in a very gloomy frame of mind. On the morrow,for he only existed from morrow to morrow, there was, so to speak, no to-day for him,on the 1220 Les Miserables morrow, he found no one at the Luxembourg; he had expected this. At dusk, he went to the house. No light in the windows; the shades were drawn; the third floor was totally dark. Marius rapped at the porte cochere, entered, and said to the porter: The gentleman on the third floor? Has moved away, replied the porter. Marius reeled and said feebly: How long ago? Yesterday. Where is he living now? I dont know anything about it. So he has not left his new address? No. And the porter, raising his eyes, recognized Marius. Come! So its you! said he; but you are decidedly a spy

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1221 BOOK SEVENTH. PATRON MINETTE 1222 Les Miserables CHAPTER I

MINES AND MINERS Human societies all have what is called in theatrical parlance, a third lower floor. The social soil is everywhere undermined, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. These works are superposed one upon the other. There are superior mines and inferior mines. There is a top and a bottom in this obscure sub-soil, which sometimes gives way beneath civilization, and which our indifference and heedlessness trample under foot. The Encyclopedia, in the last century, was a mine that was almost open to the sky. The shades, those sombre hatchers of primitive Christianity, only awaited an opportunity to bring about an explosion under the Caesars and to inundate the human race with light. For in the sacred shadows there lies latent light. Volcanoes are full of a shadow that is capable of flashing forth. Every form begins by being night. The catacombs, in which the first mass was said, were not alone the cellar of Rome, they were the vaults of the world.

Beneath the social construction, that complicated marvel of a structure, there are excavations of all sorts. There is the religious mine, the philosophical mine, the economFree eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1223